Wednesday, Aug 16, 2017 at 4:17 PM

The United States won't settle for cosmetic changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement, the top U.S. trade negotiator said, as negotiations to rework terms of the pact began.
President Donald Trump has called the 23-year-old trade pact the "worst" in history and vowed to fix it — or withdraw from it.
On the first of five days of talks, U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer said Wednesday that Trump "is not interested in a mere tweaking of a few provisions and an updating of a few chapters. We believe NAFTA has fundamentally failed many, many Americans and needs major improvement."
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Wednesday, Aug 16, 2017 at 9:04 AM

Egypt's antiquities ministry says that archaeologists have discovered three tombs dating back more than 2,000 years, from the Ptolemaic Period.
The discovery was made in the Nile Valley province of Minya south of Cairo, in an area known as al-Kamin al-Sahrawi.
Tuesday's statement by the ministry says the unearthed sarcophagi and clay fragments suggest that the area was a large necropolis from sometime between the 27th Dynasty and the Greco-Roman period.
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Wednesday, Aug 16, 2017 at 6:23 PM

Several Confederate monuments were removed in Baltimore, Maryland, overnight, as the violence at a rally held by those opposed to the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, moves leaders across the country to accelerate plans to take down remaining imagery of the Old South.
Statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were removed with a crane and placed on flatbed trucks early Wednesday morning, WBAL reported. A statue of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney and the Confederate Women's Monument in Bishop Square Park were also removed.
Many local and state governments announced they would remove statues and other imagery from public land, or consider doing so, in the aftermath of Saturday's white nationalist rally that killed one person and injured dozens more.
The changes were publicized as President Donald Trump defended Confederate statues in wide-ranging remarks.
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Wednesday, Aug 16, 2017 at 7:20 AM

President Donald Trump held a contentious press conference in which he answered critics who said he waited too long to condemn the white nationalists who staged a protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12 that turned violent. Here FactCheck.org puts into context some of the statements that the president made in his defense, including that Trump claiming he didn’t have the facts when he blamed "many sides" for the violence. Trump had answered extensive questions about the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville for the first time at a press conference on Aug. 15.
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Thursday, Aug 17, 2017 at 11:04 AM

The Powerball jackpot has climbed to an estimated $510 million, making it one of the largest in U.S. history.
No one matched all six numbers in Wednesday night's drawing, so the national lottery game will continue to grow ahead of the next drawing Saturday night. At $510 million, the drawing would be the eighth largest lottery jackpot.
The prize figure refers to the annuity option, in which winnings would be paid out over 29 years. A winner who took the cash option would snag $324.2 million, though that would be subject to state and federal taxes.
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Wednesday, Aug 16, 2017 at 4:00 AM

The death rate of teens overdosing on drugs more than doubled from 1999 to 2015, NBC News reported.
There were 772 drug overdose deaths for people 15-19 years old in 2015, according to the data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is a death rate of 3.7 per 100,000.
By contrast, the death rate in 1999 was 1.6 per 100,000.
"For both male and female adolescents, the majority of drug overdose deaths in 2015 were unintentional," the CDC report states, adding that opioids, specifically heroin, were the chief culprits in 2015.
Get More at NBC News

Wednesday, Aug 16, 2017 at 9:40 AM

If you got an offer over the phone for a free cruise over nearly five years starting in July, a settlement in a lawsuit may entitle you to as much as $900.
That suit claimed a marketing group violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act when the automated calls offering free trips on Carnival, Royal Caribbean or Norwegian Cruise lines were made.
A settlement in the case, Carvat v. Resort Marketing Group, Inc. et al, was announced last week, creating a fund of between $7 and 12.5 million to pay for claims, attorneys' fees and expenses and more.
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Wednesday, Aug 16, 2017 at 1:39 AM

Award-winning documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, joined by actor Mark Ruffalo, led audience members of his new Broadway play to Trump Tower to protest President Donald Trump's comments about the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
It was the second round of protests outside the building since the president arrived in New York City Monday night, and it was a swift and vocal response to Trump's earlier news conference at the tower, where he angrily doubled down on his belief that "both sides" were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville.
"I think there's blame on both sides," Trump said Tuesday. "I have no doubt about it, and you don't have any doubt about it either."
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Tuesday, Aug 15, 2017 at 10:56 PM

Combative and insistent, President Donald Trump declared anew Tuesday "there is blame on both sides" for the deadly violence last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, appearing to once again equate the actions of white supremacist groups and those protesting them. He showed sympathy for the fringe groups' efforts to preserve Confederate monuments.
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Tuesday, Aug 15, 2017 at 6:30 PM

President Donald Trump won't say whether he plans to keep Steve Bannon, a top adviser and key campaign strategist, in the White House.
"We'll see what happens with Mr. Bannon," Trump said at an impromptu Tuesday news conference where he fielded questions about his confidence in his adviser.
Bannon, the former leader of conservative Breitbart News website, has been a contentious figure in a divided White House for months and has been viewed as on the outs before. But in recent days, some of Trump's closest advisers have returned to pressing the president to fire Bannon.
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Wednesday, Aug 16, 2017 at 6:23 AM

They wear the traditional habit they've worn since Mother Lucita first arrived in LA from Mexico in 1927. The gowns are brown — symbolizing the humility of the Earth; white — a symbol of purity; and black — a symbol of death to the world with life in Christ.
The Carmelite Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Los Angeles have been actively serving their flock for 90 years. In Duarte, the campus includes their convent, a day care with pre-K curricula, an assisted living home, Saint Teresita Hospital and a church. And walking the hallways and gardens are 135 women living out their lives as brides of their God.
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Tuesday, Aug 15, 2017 at 8:44 PM

President Donald Trump on Tuesday ripped into business leaders who resigned from his White House jobs panel — the latest sign that corporate America's romance with Trump is faltering — after his equivocal response to violence by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.
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Tuesday, Aug 15, 2017 at 11:30 PM

A former Miami Dolphins player who was ordered into custody during a family court hearing in Miami on Tuesday injured two officers when he tried to flee, authorities said.
Dimitri Patterson, 34, was at the Lawson E. Thomas Court Center when the judge ordered he be taken into custody, Miami-Dade Police said.
As Patterson tried to run out a door, he tackled a female officer, who fell and hit her head, police said. Another female officer suffered a hand injury before Patterson was taken into custody, police said.
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Tuesday, Aug 15, 2017 at 10:00 PM

Texas' congressional maps are still flawed by racial gerrymandering and must be partially redrawn before the 2018 elections, a three-judge federal panel ruled Tuesday.
Courts have chided Texas in recent years for intentional racial discrimination in voting maps and a strict voter ID law, and the state must now quickly redo two of the state's 36 congressional districts. One is held by Democrat Lloyd Doggett of Austin and the other by Republican Blake Farenthold.
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